The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
As advances in technology continue to be developed, the utilization of Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance experiences is becoming increasingly popular. Various entities have attempted to capitalize on this increasing popularity by providing AR content to users based on specific types of object recognition or location tracking.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,519,844 to Richey et al., filed on Jun. 30, 2010 contemplates accessing first and second location data, wherein the second location data has increased accuracy regarding the location of a device, and communicating augmented data to the device based on the location data.
The '844 patent and all other publications identified herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
Another example of location based content services, while not directed to AR content, can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 8,321,527 to Martin, et al, filed on Sep. 10, 2009, which describes a system for scheduling content distribution to a mobile device by storing different locations, collecting user location data over a period of time, collecting wireless signal strength data, and scheduling pre-caching of content to the device if the user is predicted to be at a location with poor signal strength.
Still further, various other examples of systems and methods for providing content to a user based on a location or other parameters can be found in International Patent Application Publication Number WO 2013/023705 to Hoffman, et al, filed on Aug. 18, 2011, International Patent Application Publication Number WO 2007/140155 to Leonard, et al, filed on May 21, 2007, U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2013/0003708 to Ko, et al, filed on Jun. 28, 2011, U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2013/0073988 to Groten, et al, filed on Jun. 1, 2011, and U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2013/0124326 to Huang, et al, filed on Nov. 15, 2011.
While some of the known references contemplate refining location identification or pre-caching content based on location information, they fail to consider that areas have various views of interest, and fail to differentiate between sub-areas based on AR content densities. Viewed from another perspective, known location based systems fail to contemplate segmenting an area into clusters based on what is viewable or what AR content is available.
Thus, there is still a need for improved AR service technologies, and especially location based AR service technologies.